Physicians Hang Up on Legal Hot Line

The Los Angeles County Medical Assn. is ending its promotional arrangement with a hot line for physicians who want to learn which patients have a history of filing lawsuits.

But the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Assn., which launched a retaliatory service, plans to continue offering information by telephone and through the mail about doctors who have been sued.

The medical society has given a 90-day notice canceling its contract with Physician’s Alert, a Chicago-based company that operates the hot line. “We are separated,” said association president Jack McCleary. “The divorce comes Oct. 1.”

The reason: Lack of response. “The doctors were just underwhelmed by the opportunity,” said David Zeitlin, the association’s director of communications. “Although we were concerned and still are about the malpractice situation . . . most doctors these days aren’t interested in turning patients away. We talk about a physician glut these days. I don’t know any doctors going hungry, but they can’t afford to be cavalier.”

Declaring that the threat of malpractice claims “makes it very difficult to practice medicine,” the medical association recommended the service to its 10,000 members at a news conference last October and has since placed full-page ads for the hot line in its magazine.

In return, Physician’s Alert waived its annual fee of $150 for medical association members. The fee is charged to nonmembers, in addition to the $10 charged for each call to the service.

Physician’s Alert also agreed to pay the medical society a percentage of the revenues generated by the arrangement. Zeitlin said that in the past year “we might have gotten $100 or $200” from the service. He and McCleary said they did not know how many doctors used the hot line--and do not know any doctors who have.

A call to the hot line provides the case number, date and county where a lawsuit is filed, and the names of defendants for any patient whose name is listed in a computerized registry of more than 1 million civil suits filed in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The service does not tell the user whether the lawsuit is for medical malpractice, product liability or personal injury, although divorce and child custody cases are omitted.

Physician’s Alert, which operates similar hot lines in Chicago and Detroit, will continue to be available locally to doctors who pay its enrollment fee, McCleary said.

The Los Angeles Trial Lawyers’ Assn., enraged by the medical society’s affiliation with the hot line, struck back with its own free telephone service for medical consumers. The attorneys’ group service tells callers if specific doctors have been sued before and offers to mail lists of the suits.

Like Physician’s Alert, the lawyers’ hot line does not differentiate between malpractice suits and other litigation, said Samuel Shore, vice president of the California Trial Lawyers Assn. and past president of the local branch. Shore, a malpractice attorney who also is a doctor, organized the consumer hot line.

Shore said he does not know how many calls the lawyers’ service has received but the association “has had to add personnel to help handle the load. There’s obviously a need for this.”

He said he thought the doctors’ hot line “was a stupid thing for them to do,” but added that he was surprised to learn that few had taken advantage of the service. “I frankly burst out laughing when I heard about it,” he said.